George Allan England

“ Was I—?”
“You killed him? demanded the lugubrious stranger. “You admit the corpus delicti?”
“Sure's shootin'l The corpus was in my Aunt Vyeny's trunk, an' I admit I put it there. I ain't never denied that! But is that any reason to persecute a man a'most to death? I ain't no gret of a hand to complain, mister, but I doggone nigh flew all to gosh, watchin' them potato bugs skivin' through my patch. I dunno's I ever had no bitterer minutes in my life, except mebbe when I got that there letter from my brother Abner, down to Portland, tellin' me the officers had got my name off the trunk.” ”

“ John street, hit a peanut cart right in front of Bert Hutchinson's house. You know Bert, what runs the New Portland Theater. The engine throwed the peanut cart through Bert's front window into his parlor, an' filled the piano with peanuts, an' I callate you'll have to pay damages on the piano an' the house, also make good on the peanuts. “'Three women fainted at the depot, an' the police had to fight the crowd to keep 'em from gittin' crushed. You'll admit, yourself, they was justified in thinkin' it was a murder-in-a-trunk mystery. ”

“ Cyrenus tarnally laid it to Eleazer, who gaffled Cy by what was left of his hair, got him down an' pronged at him with t'other fist till he was all a gore o' blood. He'd of licked him, too, only Cy had better teeth, an' when he got Eleazer by the ear, that halted Eleazer, kind of. Eleazer, he ain't spleeny, but you know how 'tis, yourself, when anybody bites half your ear off. ”

“ When they seen that blood, they got right up on their shoe-taps an' figgered 'twas murder in the worst degree. Who wouldn't of? I ain't blamin' 'em for that. Abner, he told me what they suspicioned in his letter. The letter was kind of like this, as I remember:
“'Dear Brother: “There's blue Hell to pay, an' you better come up 'mongst the missin' a spell. ”